


Trust

by ms_nawilla



Series: The Wheat and the Chaff [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America:The Winter Soldier compliant, Gen, Post-Episode: s01e17 Turn Turn Turn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 20:13:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1661051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ms_nawilla/pseuds/ms_nawilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick Fury told Steve Rogers that the last time he trusted someone, he lost an eye, but he clearly still has two.  Must have been a different eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt to post on AO3. I actually finished something! (I promise the next time I post I'll actually have it beta-read and everything). It's been years since I posted anything anywhere, and never in MCU, so I'd love to know what you think, even if you hated it.
> 
> This was written in the week between the original broadcast of "Turn, Turn, Turn" and "Providence" but I think it's still canon compliant. (Now with actual beta-reader corrections. Thanks Ceria!)

_The last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye_.

The harsh fluorescent light turned the twenty-year-old scotch in his tumbler a ghastly color, but the burn was just as he remembered when he closed his eyes.  Sitting here in the safe house, he made a silent toast to all the loyal men and women under his command who had not survived the day.  A long moment to remember them before he tried to forget their faces, their names, their loyalty as they were cut down by an enemy so insidious that even if the body survived, trust never could.

 _Last time_.

He brushed a hand over his eye patch, wincing at memories too painful to recall.

He took another drink.

The last time he trusted someone, the world was a less complicated place.  Friend and foe still got mixed up, promises broken, loyalty betrayed, but not like this.  Not on this scale.

Not by choice.

_Last time._

The last time he trusted someone he had lost his one good eye.

“Goddamnit, Phil, you stupid, stupid bastard.”

Phil Coulson was a man he could trust, his right hand man, the man who would step up and do what needed to be done, and all he had to do was ask him.  Competent, efficient, stealthy and dangerous, and most people had no idea.  Phil was strong enough to do what needed to be done, strong enough to keep the secrets and had always been devoted to duty.  His integrity was unquestionable.

And then he went above and beyond and when everyone else lost their heads and chaos reigned, Phil had stood up to a god and was smote for it.  He had trusted Phil Coulson to step up and do what needed to be done.  He had trusted that Phil Coulson would not falter.

He had trusted Phil Coulson to live, but now he realized that was trusting faith, not Phil.

And so he had lost his one good eye, and somehow had lost his way.  He wondered if Phil would have seen this coming.  If Phil would have seen the cracks, the little slip ups, would have heard the whispers.   If Phil would have saved him from his own hubris.

But he had lost his eye, and with it his trust.

“You’re not supposed to mix alcohol with the meds they have you on.”  Hill sat down on the other side of the small Formica table. 

Wordlessly, he slid a clean glass and the bottle over.  As much as he wanted to get drunk and just forget for a few goddamn hours, he knew it was too risky.  He couldn’t afford to let his guard down, even here.  SHIELD had pioneered all the new fancy ways they had to find people that didn’t want to be found.  It was only a matter of time before the algorithms succeeded.  Their only advantage for the moment was that no one was looking.

 _Fringe benefit of being dead_.

“Pierce tried to break into my encrypted files.  My personal files.”  He held out a small memory drive.  “Couldn’t get in.  They cobbled together a few retinal scans, tried to convince the computer it was a fresh read.  Didn’t work.”

“Wrong eye?”  Maria poured herself a finger and took a small sip.  She preferred wine, but the post-battle emotional maelstrom called for something harsher. 

“Wrong eye.”  Fury plugged the drive into the small, wifi-disabled tablet near his elbow.  “Definitely the wrong eye.”  He called up a folder of audio files.  “I got to check my messages.”  He finished his drink, then poured himself another finger.  “May called while I was dead.”

“Melinda May?”  Maria looked up sharply.  With all that was going on at the Triskelion and other SHIELD facilities, she hadn’t considered the mobile units.  “Is she still on the Bus?”

Fury played back the audio, silently listening again as the words poured out.  The clicks as the connection was confirmed.  May giving her passcode.  Coulson’s voice faint in the background, urgent, angry, suspicious.  A stranger’s reply.  May insisting this was a direct line to Director Fury and Coulson’s clear huff of disbelief.  The stranger on his personal damn phone telling his agents that he was dead.  May’s gasp of surprise.

The gunshots.

“May?”  Maria gasped, hand to her mouth.  “Phil?” 

Another gasp and more shots rang out, some close, some far.  Sounds of retreat.  Long silence, then running, doors banging open.  Someone declaring the cockpit clear, faint from across the room.  A low chuckle from the stranger before the call was disconnected. 

Fury closed the file. 

“The satellite connection says the Bus was stationary at the Hub when the call was placed.”

Maria took another small sip, staring at nothing.

“Whenever the Hub or the Triskelion remotely overtakes a SHIELD transport, a message is automatically sent to me directly, wherever I am.”  He doesn’t sip his scotch, he tries to drown his pain in deep swallows.  “May wasn’t flying the plane.  Probably why she broke down and told Coulson about the direct line.” 

Maria gave him a broken look.

“Never did get to have that drink with Phil at the bar.”

“Was the Hub SHIELD or was the Hub HYDRA when they took the Bus?”

“Does it matter?”  Nick hands were still but he could feel something shaking deep inside.  “They executed them.  I put my best friend in mobile base with a subordinate ordered to kill him if he stepped out of line, and he gets murdered by my own agents because I didn’t trust him enough to keep him in the action.”

“It’s not your fault, Nick.  You didn’t know if you could trust him.  Nobody knew.  You were trying to protect him from himself.”

“He begged me to tell him the truth.  He just wanted—”  The sob caught him by surprise, a violent spasm, purging emotion.  He twisted, choking on his pain, tears dripping from his eye and from behind the patch.  Hill laid a hand on his arm, offering silent comfort, her own cheeks wet with grief.

“He _trusted_ me.  He just wanted me to tell him the truth.  But I couldn’t trust him.”

 _I couldn’t trust him, and I lost him anyway_.

“Are you sure Phil wasn’t HYDRA?  I know you two go way back, I _know_.  But Sitwell was his protégé, and he sang like a canary.  How do we know Phil wasn’t theirs?" 

Nick Fury did not glare at Maria.  He did not look at her at all. 

“We cracked his skull like an egg, Maria.  We scanned every cell and restarted his brain.  We read his memories like a diary.  We poked and we prodded and made him relive every good and bad event he’d ever had, dozens at a time.  We filled in the gaps and shored up the leaks, and redacted our transgressions so he wouldn’t remember he had begged for death.  Sitwell sang, but Coulson had every secret ripped out of him, whether he knew it or not.  If he was HYDRA, he wouldn’t have been able to hide it.”

“He didn’t die thinking you had ordered his death.  He wasn’t killed by his own team.”

“He didn’t live to see SHIELD fall.”

“I still wish he were here with us.”  Maria finished her drink, then capped the bottle, her gaze daring Nick to object.  “He wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.” 

“It was my call.” 

Nick stared into his glass, ignoring the ghastly color of his twenty-year-old scotch.  He tried not to see the face of his friend, to hear the fear in his voice, the betrayal he couldn’t quite hide as Nick had continued to ignore him.  He tried not to hear the desperation in that final, bitter phone call.

He closed his eyes and tried not to hear his best friend, Cheese, telling him it would be all right, that he would get him to the medics, to trust him, that the wound was bad, but the doctors might be able to save his eye if he didn’t move it.  That the medic told him to cover both eyes so he wouldn’t look around and hurt the injured one more.  To please trust him, _please Marcus_ , because he was not going to leave him behind and he was not going to die out here, and they just had to get to the rendezvous point, if he would just trust his buddy to lead him through the darkness.

 _The last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye.  And lived to lie about it_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you severely injure an eye, you are actually supposed to cover both eyes. Because our eyes move together, the injured eye will continue to move (and injure itself further) if the uninjured one is looking around.


End file.
